Author/ Author of Caijing Tianxia Weekly Han Ling
Edited / Mao Shiyang
Buy a Mercedes-Benz electric car and change the motor twice in four months
On January 18, 68 Mercedes-Benz EQC owners issued a joint statement. In the statement, the owners said that Mercedes-Benz officials have not yet had a clear response to the frequent EQC bad motor problem since the first half of 2021, they hope that Mercedes-Benz executives will stand up and give an explanation to the owners who encounter motor problems, and they also ask "Daimler China to admit the mistake in time and give the owner a reasonable answer as soon as possible."
"Now there are more than 300 people in our rights defense group, and more than 150 of them have been collected just because the motor is burned out." Huang Xin, owner of The Mercedes-Benz EQC, told the Weekly That some of the people in the rights protection group encountered small problems such as display failures and air conditioning system errors, but the motor burnout is fatal during driving and will involve personal safety.
It is generally believed that the core system of electric vehicles includes batteries, motors and electronic controls, in which the motor is the power source of electric vehicles, and the function can be compared to the engine of traditional fuel vehicles.
This Mercedes-Benz EQC, which is a headache for rights defenders, is the first electric vehicle of the Mercedes-Benz brand, listed in China in November 2019, and the price range was initially set at 49.98-57.98 million yuan, far exceeding the price range of 300,000 yuan for competitors such as Weilai and Tesla Model Y. Because of this, Mercedes-Benz subsequently reduced the starting price of EQC to 300,000 yuan, but in the core data, this car NEDC has a range of only 415km, while the range of competitor models such as Weilai has reached 600km.
In the eyes of car owners, the Mercedes-Benz brand is one of the main reasons why they accept a premium. However, the endorsement of a century-old luxury brand has not solved the problem of electric vehicles. In the Mercedes-Benz EQC community discussion, many car owners posted about the problem of Mercedes-Benz EQC burning motors.
Owner Wang Lin told the "Finance and Economics" weekly that he chose Mercedes-Benz EQC, which is the Mercedes-Benz brand, "because it is the first electric vehicle of Mercedes-Benz, at that time, I felt that the electric vehicle motor and battery were not bad, and the car would not have too much problem." However, at the end of July last year, only two months later, Wang Lin received a warning in the car that the coolant was missing, and after replenishing the coolant for a week, the screen showed a fault, and the vehicle could not start. At that time, the car's driving range was only 9800 kilometers, and there was no way, he had to go to the 4S shop to replace the motor.
"I'm in a new car, and I've undergone such an overhaul, which is tantamount to a major accident." Wang Lin told the Weekly Magazine of Finance and Economics. In the passenger car market, experiencing major accidents can greatly reduce the value of the vehicle in the used car market.
Huang Xin told caijing tianxia weekly that in the rights defense group he is in, whether it is a new car that has traveled thousands of kilometers or an old car for a year or two, there has been a situation where the motor is burned out. "Burned out, go to the 4S shop, and then (and then) broken and go to change, the 4S shop will take our owner as a guinea pig, after the shelf life will ignore people." Huang Xin said that the treatment plan of the 4S store is to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause.
However, after changing the motor, what awaited Wang Lin was a new round of torture. In mid-October, after changing the motor, Wang Lin took the car home, and the 4S store gave him a 5,000 yuan electric card to compensate in the name of caring for customers. A month later, while charging in the evening, the fault light came on again.
"At that time, I went directly to the 4S store with the fault light to check, and a day later, the reply given by the 4S store was: the motor assembly needs to be replaced." A new car, in four months, underwent two motor replacement overhauls, Wang Lin joked that he repaired the motor numb.
Later, in the national car friend group, I saw that there were many car friends who had the same experience as him, and even some of them had replaced the motor 3 times. "Now I am terrified with the car, I dare not run too far, I am worried that one day it will be broken, and I will not be able to come back." Wang Lin said.
Jianyu, another advocate of the rights defense car, said that he was the car he picked up on November 12, 2020, and during the use of the car, there were several times during the driving, and the trunk would automatically open from time to time. On June 19 last year, the problem of cryo-liquid alarms began to occur, and in September, battery alarms appeared. Go to the 4S shop for maintenance, the result is that the motor is broken and needs to be replaced, from motor transfer to software upgrade, it took more than 50 days. After that, problems occurred one after another with fuses and air pumps.
"Now it is a hot potato, 450,000 when I bought it, I have been driving for more than a year, and I have to deduct more than 90,000 yuan for returning the car." And since the motor has been replaced, the car can only travel more than 280 kilometers when it is fully charged and does not open the air conditioner. Zhang Jianyu said.
Huang Xin said that many riders go to the 4S shop to detect that the problem is "lack of coolant", and the final result is to change the motor. "Now it is the dealer who is comforting us, Mercedes-Benz is hard to carry and does not admit the problem, the manufacturer does not respond, and if it is broken, it will be changed for you."
Quality problems or design defects?
Why do Mercedes-Benz EQC electric vehicles have frequent quality problems? At present, there are two schools of view, one is considered to be a design defect, and the other is a quality problem.
Regarding the problem of "coolant penetration burning out of the motor" that appeared in the Mercedes-Benz EQC, Huang Xin and several riders went to the relevant maintenance points for testing, and the conclusion given by the maintenance master was that the design was "unreasonable".
Engineers involved in the dismantling said that the EQC's coolant interface includes electric drive system heat dissipation, cockpit air conditioning cooling and battery high temperature cooling system, etc., up to 5 interface circuits, compared with fuel vehicles and other brands of electric vehicles are much more. This means that with more interfaces, the chance of coolant leakage increases.
Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, believed in an interview with the media that the main reason for the motor failure of Mercedes-Benz EQC was design defects in the process of oil to electricity conversion.
As Mercedes-Benz's first electric vehicle product, EQC is a model based on the fuel vehicle Mercedes-Benz GLC, commonly known as "oil to electricity". Previously, "oil to electricity" was a way for major auto brands to quickly launch products in the electric vehicle market, but now, Volkswagen and other brands have moved towards new development, and the main electric vehicle products currently sold by Mercedes-Benz are still from "oil to electricity".
"Mercedes-Benz wants to reuse the fuel vehicle's system to the maximum, but space is limited and problems are prone to problems during the redesign process." Zhang Xiang believes that the motor problems encountered by EQC car owners may be the sequelae of "oil to electricity". If Mercedes adopted a completely new design platform, there would be no problem, which could be solved through a recall.
However, there are also professionals who hold different views.
A practitioner in the field of automotive electronics told the "Finance world" weekly that the problems that occur after the mass production of Mercedes-Benz EQC are basically quality defects, and if they are design defects, it is difficult to pass the test and road test of the main engine factory.
He added that just as the Tesla Model 3 chassis component breakage is caused by the quality of the parts, it is not a problem with Tesla's design. "The same is true of Mercedes-Benz, which may be a process or improper choice of materials, or a deviation in quality control."
In fact, since the mercedes-Benz EQC was launched, its negative reviews have been continuous. Posts about "coolant burning out of motors" appear frequently on multiple automotive forums. In addition, 80% of the complaints about Mercedes-Benz EQC on the car quality network are focused on core components such as motors and power batteries.
"We car owners want Mercedes-Benz to recall the EQC and extend the vehicle's three-year warranty to customers who have replaced the motor." Wang Lin appealed.
(Image source: Joint Statement of Owners)
So far, Mercedes-Benz has not admitted that it is a design or quality defect, nor has it filed a recall for the problems that car owners have reacted to.
In fact, the car has been recalled for other issues. In August last year, Beijing Benz filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation, the reason for the recall is that some EQCs can not identify and check the status of the air conditioning condensate hose after assembly, can not ensure the tightness of its connection, resulting in air conditioning condensate may enter the crew compartment and corrode electronic components. At that time, 796 domestic EQCs with production dates from June 12, 2019 to June 18, 2020 were recalled in China.
Three months later, Mercedes-Benz once again recalled some EQC models overseas, totaling 19,000 units. The reason for the official recall is that the vehicle may have a steering system failure and the driver will receive a red warning message in the gauges. Since the harness of the steering system may have been damaged during assembly, the water in the environment may enter the harness through the isolation layer during the use of the vehicle, and the harness will age or even fail over time.
Sales of the first electric vehicle are not good, and the electrification transformation of Mercedes-Benz is slow
According to the statistics of the Association, in December 2021, Mercedes-Benz EQC sales were 812 vehicles, and in 2021, the annual sales volume was only more than 6,000 vehicles. Compared with last year's domestic BMW new energy sales, the cumulative sales of the whole year exceeded 48,000 units, an increase of 69.6% year-on-year, of which the sales of pure electric BMW iX3 exceeded 21,000 units.
At the Guangzhou Auto Show in October last year, Mercedes-Benz China once again released EQA and EQB from oil to electricity, of which the EQA300 4matic pre-priced at 370,000 yuan and the EQB 350 4matic for 440,000 yuan. Mercedes-Benz's intention is obvious, and it urgently needs to seize the domestic luxury electric vehicle market with the help of these electric vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz's determination to electrify is self-evident.
In December, Daimler announced that the Supervisory Board had approved a €60 billion investment plan for Mercedes-Benz's electrification and autonomous driving research and development. In the statement, Mercedes-Benz said it would continue to maintain a high level of investment in research and development for electrification and digitalization.
In fact, a few months before the announcement of the investment plan, Mercedes-Benz had already announced that it would fully electrify by the end of 2030. This year, Mercedes-Benz will provide pure electric models for all segments of the markets involved in its products, and from 2025 onwards, each model of Mercedes-Benz will be available in a pure electric version, and it is planned to increase the proportion of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models in sales to 50%.
Even if Mercedes-Benz began to accelerate its transformation in the field of electrification, it only began to launch electric models on its own pure electric platform in 2025, which is much behind the domestic new cars and even independent brands.
In 2021, Tesla will deliver 936,000 vehicles worldwide, accounting for 51.7% of the Chinese market. According to the data released by the Association, in the top 15 of the 2021 new energy SUV retail sales list, 8 are the products of the new car-making forces, model Y, ideal ONE, NIO ES6, NIO ES8 and so on are among them.
There is no doubt that the electric vehicle business will become a new profit growth point for luxury car companies in the future, and it is also an important area of competition. However, the current Mercedes-Benz is not performing well in terms of both electric vehicle sales and product quality.
In this EQC rights protection incident, as of now, Mercedes-Benz has not responded to the demands of car owners.
(At the request of the interviewer, Huang Xin, Wang Lin and Zhang Jianyu are pseudonyms)
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